


Whatever Happened to That Girl You Used to Know?

by crowleyshouseplant



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: Gen, POV Second Person, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-27
Updated: 2016-05-27
Packaged: 2018-07-10 12:14:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6984631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crowleyshouseplant/pseuds/crowleyshouseplant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Introspective Coda to "Korra Alone."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Whatever Happened to That Girl You Used to Know?

This is the truth: you don't know what happened to that girl you used to know, or thought you knew. You see her everywhere. You see her bare feet and her bare shoulders, corded with muscles.

You wake from the nightmares, sick and trembling. You wish you could scream at Amon, at your uncle, at the Red Lotus: I am just a teenage girl. Why are you doing this? Why are you trying to use me, to kill me, to hurt me? Don't you see how that's cruel? Don't you care?

They are not there to hear you, and besides, they probably wouldn't care.

You see her long hair, fallen out of its ponytail. You cut yours short because it seemed right, but your hand still goes for its ghost, to pull your hair when you're waiting and nervous and afraid.

People keep telling you that those fights are over, but it doesn't feel over to you. You think you will carry this trauma inside of you forever. You stop talking about it. You say you're fine. Sometimes, you are fine. Sometimes you're not. 

You see her eyes glow with the Avatar spirit, and your tired blue eyes gaze back, bloodshot from lack of sleep and the hard knocks you've taken along the way. Your eyes are heavy, and you are tired of fighting.

You think of the girls you used to know. 

Avatar Kyoshi in her green kimono and her face paint. After--after what happened before, you paint your face the way she did because you think you might find her in the ritual of it, but you feel silly and look foolish and you wash it off with water, and you do not see her, you do not feel her. There is only you with your dripping cheeks. 

Avatar Yangchen in her saffron robes and her long hair and her blue arrows. You wonder if you've disappointed her because, even after everything, you're still not where you think you should be when it comes to airbending. You go to the plains with their long grasses. You dance in spiral circles. You listen to the wind and hope to hear your voice, but there is only the whisper of the leaves. 

These are the women that you used to know, and they were taken from you, just like so much has been taken from you: your girlhood, your bending, your lives--everything gone, gone, gone.

You don't understand why you cannot reach or speak with Raava. 

Perhaps you were never whole after Raava had been stripped from you. Maybe you were not the same. Maybe you were broken up but still patched together out of something like habit. Instead of being together forever, you are just the tea kettle, and she will pour out of you again, some day, leaving you alone again.

You would cry, but you have already cried all the tears of your several hundred lifetimes, and you are tired of crying.

You don't think the grief will ever stop. You don't think you will ever stop regretting not reaching out to your past selves when you still could. Their absence carves you hollow.

Dressed as an air acolyte, you go to the air temple. They don't recognize you, and it is easy to slip into the room with the avatar statues. You put your fingers to their stone cheeks, you kiss their dark eyes, and you whisper in their stone ears that you are sorry, that you miss them. 

You follow the line of your lives until you sit in the lotus position in front of the engraved figurine of Wan and Raava. You close your eyes, and you breathe, and you hope that they will join you.


End file.
